Compiz-reloaded is the continuation of the 0.8 compiz version--the one with the flashy effect plugins. There is a much subdued 0.9 compiz version in Debian 9, but I've bumped the epoch in my packages so they will upgrade over the Debian packages. However, I think there may be some package conflicts with differently-named plugin packages in Stretch, so if those cause a hangup, uninstall those first before installing from my repo. If anyone finds a conflict, let me know here, and I can try and make my packages upgrade smoothly by conflicting with and removing the Stretch versions first.

There are repositories for compiz-reloaded 0.8.12 at tuxfamily.org, but I could not find any for the latest 0.8.14 release, so made them on the openSUSE Build Service. The new versions fixes bugs and adds a new "Earth" plugin for the desktop cube:

Anyway, the instructions to add the repo and its key are as follows. Sudo users can become root with "sudo -i" in the terminal:

Compiz newbies can install simple-ccsm and use it to get started without resorting to the much more complicated standard settings manager, ccsm. If you're using Compton as a compositor, you must also "killall compton" in the terminal before switching to compiz. The "Compiz Fusion Icon" from your menu makes it easy to switch back and forth to Compiz, as well as provide some shortcuts to ccsm and the Emerald window decorations manager.

I'm not using Stretch yet, but let me know if there are any issues with it, and I'll try and fix them.

I also made Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10 repos, the instructions are the same, except you would need to substitute "xUbuntu_16.04" and "xUbuntu_16.10" in the instructions where it would have "Debian_9.0", for example.

The next version 0.9 is developed for Unity by Ubuntu and has always been very unstable on other environments. After researching on the web, some developers have taken the last sources 0.8.8 to fix bugs, remove the deprecated options and add enhancements on the different applications. This new version was pushed on Github and works very well on Debian, this is why this project has been created.

I really can't understand why you have problems with my "crap" repository providing a choice. No one is being forced to use it.

Steve, Just installed your compiz on a Debian Testing VB installation.Install went fine after I removed previous compiz.Now tweaking settings.If all this goes well I will install it on my working system when I get home from work.

OK, it looks like simple-ccsm and compizconfig-settings-manager need to have a dependency for gir1.2-rsvg-2.0 added. Try installing that and see if those both run. If so, make sure that emerald-themes is installed (it's a Recommends for emerald), then run compizconfig-settings-manager and make sure Window Decorations is checked in Effects, then click on it and change the command to

emerald --replace

This will at least get you the Emerald window decorations working. You also have "Compiz Fusion Icon" in the Accessories or Utilities of your DE's menu--that's a tray icon that allows turning Compiz on or off and quick access to the compiz settings and Emerald theme manager.

I know it must be possible to get the gtk and metacity window decorations working in compiz, since I have them working in Jessie, but this is going to take some research, and I'll update those packages in my repo first with the gir1.2 dependency.

Simple-ccsm depends on compizconfig-settings-manager, so I only had to add the dependency for that second package for it to get pulled in for both. It's rebuilding right now, so that should appear as an update quite soon.

Steve, Updates that you have done so far have solved my issues. simple-ccsm now starts and I can use emerald just fine also. Thanks for all the work on this. I was using the old compiz until I saw what you have done. I am glad you are keeping this alive. Just some background I started using compiz back when Mandriva existed. I was a Windows user and liked the graphics effects I could get with Windows and was looking for something similar to it in Linux.

Whoops, realized that the advanced animation "plus" plugins did not get built, which includes ones such as the beamup and fire (burn) effect, because of a missing build-depend in the experimental and extra plugins package. Fixed that, updates to those packages should be ready in a few minutes.

cihonm@cihonm:~$ ccsmTraceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/ccsm", line 36, in <module> import compizconfigImportError: /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compizconfig.x86_64-linux-gnu.so: undefined symbol: PyFPE_jbufcihonm@cihonm:~$ suod ccsmbash: suod: command not foundcihonm@cihonm:~$ sudo ccsmTraceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/ccsm", line 36, in <module> import compizconfigImportError: /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compizconfig.x86_64-linux-gnu.so: undefined symbol: PyFPE_jbufcihonm@cihonm:~$ simple-ccsm/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0 warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning)Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/simple-ccsm", line 34, in <module> import compizconfig as ccsImportError: /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compizconfig.x86_64-linux-gnu.so: undefined symbol: PyFPE_jbuf

I can only guess that it's due to some issue with having the python backend to those built on Stretch and you running them on Buster. When I get time, I will look and see how much work it would be for me to manually build the affected packages for Buster on my own machine. At least I know now how to easily set up new cross-compiling pbuilder thingies on my laptop with one simple command.